"Give it to me!"
Brand's hands waved wildly, scattering flames in every direction.
"That's not happening."
With Yuumi's healing and the effect of Nullifying Orb, Caleb held firm against the wave of heat spewing toward him.
"You can't defend against my flames."
"Oh? Then can you withstand my gale?"
Fate Sealed struck out once more, and Aery circled Brand as he flew through the air.
By the time Aery returned to Caleb's side, only a charred, human-shaped mark remained on the ground.
"Then what if I say the same thing to you?"
Caleb suddenly turned around and faced Ryze, who stood ready for battle.
"Isn't using your former student as bait a little inhumane?"
"Heh."
Ryze's laugh seemed to carry the snow and wind of the Freljord within it, and one rune after another lit up across his body.
Kai'Sa also spread the wings on both sides of her body as if facing a great enemy, ready to strike at any moment.
Back in the Freljord, she had seen this mage before. What he had done could not really be called wrong, but barring any accidents, the village would have been completely devoured by trolls over the next few days.
Instead, Aatrox, who had been intoxicated by slaughter, had gone berserk in the troll nest and accidentally saved dozens of lives.
"Give it to me!"
Ryze's words were exactly the same as Brand's before he had been reduced to ash, but Caleb still had no intention of giving it to him.
"After I finish dealing with the Void, I'll hand it over to you without any problem."
"But right now, the Void hasn't been dealt with, and the Ruined Black Mist hasn't been dealt with either."
"Honestly, there are so many things that can destroy or rule the world. Why focus only on World Runes?"
Ryze silently tightened his grip on the Glacial Augment in his hand.
Previously, within the Black Mist, he had indeed seen its destructive power toward the world.
After all, when humans started the Rune Wars, it had still been more or less on the level of the Ascended.
During Shurima's prime, when the empire had many Ascended and its national power was at its peak, no one had used World Runes to commit atrocities.
Of course, during the war of the Darkin, no one had shown off these things either.
Caleb had obtained a complete rune all at once, so he was able to do all kinds of things with it.
Other people, including Ryze, generally found fragments first, then slowly pieced them together into a whole.
Under Demacia's petricite forest, the two complete World Runes Ryze had painstakingly gathered had fallen into Caleb's hands just like that.
"I'd advise you to be careful."
Caleb knew Ryze was doing this so tragedy would not happen again.
But as for the new tragedies these actions would cause, Ryze did not seem to pay as much attention to that.
"You have a point."
At that thought, Ryze could not help falling into silence.
"I need to use it now. The moment something goes wrong, the Ascended beside me will take my head."
Caleb spoke with absolute certainty, and Kai'Sa beside him did her best to keep her face expressionless.
Yuumi, however, was startled. Only now did she learn about this.
"All right. But I'll also stay by your side when you use the rune."
"Of course. Welcome. Why not visit my city while you're at it?"
Seeing that Ryze was no longer clinging so rigidly to the rules he had set for himself, Caleb could not help letting out a breath of relief.
After all, Ryze's familiarity with World Runes far surpassed his own.
He simply refused to use them because he feared losing his mind like his master and student, throwing the world into chaos.
"I'll handle the rest of the journey."
Ryze looked at the runes already glowing on his body and spoke first.
In a burst of blue light, Caleb found himself looking at a bewildered Renata.
"Has Ixtal's envoy arrived?"
He and Qiyana had agreed before that an envoy would come to Zaun. As one of the first city-states to establish diplomatic relations with the new nation, the Twin Cities would be able to enjoy all kinds of privileges in Ixtal.
For example, Piltover would no longer have to worry about miner safety. As long as they paid part of the cost, they could mine there.
At the same time, while Ixtal's ecosystem was powerful, its elemental mages still cared deeply about nature.
So pollution would still be discharged into the sea, then carried by the currents toward Mount Targon in the end.
Caleb figured that since he had already sent out a Moonstone Renewer anyway, asking the Marai and the Lunari there to help handle a bit more pollution should not be too much of a problem.
"I am!"
A lisping voice sounded from Renata's mouth, and a petite woman with a tail appeared before him.
A vastaya. Caleb had seen so many of them in Piltover that he was almost sick of it.
As the World's Throat, the Twin Cities were not really a strange place to see anything.
He had seen plenty of Vastayashai'rei with animal-like features.
"Neeko?"
Caleb looked at this Oovi-Kat, who could practically be called a "shape-shifting dream girl," and could not help feeling a little emotional.
It made sense. Ever since he had returned from the Freljord, Renata had not used this office very often.
"The queen told me everything about establishing relations between our two sides."
Neeko took out a seal. Strictly speaking, this was something Qiyana should have handled herself.
But Qiyana was still at the Sun Disc right now, and without convenient transportation like portals or Ryze's Realm Warp, Neeko was helping on her behalf.
Because Caleb's relationship with Shurima seemed far from ordinary, Qiyana had specifically instructed her that the sooner they established ties, the better.
"Looks like there really are a lot more opportunities now."
Caleb thought it over like this and felt rather comfortable.
Next, all he had to do was keep developing allies and wait for the final battle.
If they could break the Void in all three places separately, then Caleb would truly wake up laughing from his dreams.
But for now, each of the three places had someone watching over it, so even that was not too much of a problem.
Just as he was thinking happily to himself, someone knocked twice on Caleb's office door.
"Is the Mecha Kha'Zix finished already?"
Caleb could not help standing and temporarily setting the documents aside.
"This is a letter for you from the two Sentinels, Lucian and Senna."
The one who entered was a Sentinel of Light. They had helped Zaun many times before this, especially during the Harrowing.
Caleb had a bad feeling the moment he opened the envelope, and after unfolding the letter, his brow furrowed even more deeply.
"What happened?"
Seeing the worry on Caleb's face, Kai'Sa could not help leaning closer.
"The Black Mist of the Shadow Isles hasn't been cut off. Instead, it seems to be drawing inward and continuing to develop."
"And it seems to have countless ties to Noxus…"
They had clearly slain Viego. They had clearly purged most of the Black Mist. Yet the Black Mist had not retreated back to the Shadow Isles and the spirit realm. Instead, it existed in the world in a more restrained form.
Viego had needed to spread the Black Mist across the whole world because he wanted to search everywhere for his beloved's relics, and because he himself could not move apart from the Black Mist.
But this restrained Black Mist made Caleb think of one place, Noxus.
It even looked as though it intended to patiently conquer one place after another.
"I'm afraid we'll have to make a trip to the Shadow Isles too."
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